Americans cherish many ideological axioms about democracy, but perhaps the most treasured one is the proposition
that democracies do not start wars. Conscience would in this
instance seem to be father to casuistry and fantasy. Not only
did the United States begin the War of 1812 and the War with Mexico (by a blockade of Mexican troops on the Rio Grande),
but it initiated two wars involving Cuba within the relatively
short space of 63 years.

It is impossible either to understand the present impasse
in American-Cuban relations, or to evaluate the recent books
on Castro's Cuba by
Theodore Draper, by
Karl E. Meyer and Tad Szulc, and by
Nicolas Rivero.1
unless one begins with the
central truth that Cuba was ours to lose. This uncomfortable
fact cannot be wished away. Not even the most elaborate and
sophisticated exercise in disingenuousness can in the end circumnavigate the existence of an American empire which included Cuba.

Had American policy in action between 1895 and 1959
actually been successful according to its own standards, then
there would have been no Castro and no CIA invasion. The
current argument about whether or not the United States should
intervene in Cuba and other Latin American countries is ridiculously irrelevant. It has been intervening ever since the 1780's and is still doing so today. The real issue concerns
whether or not any kind of intervention is capable of effecting
the traditional and existing American objectives.

Notes for this page

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.comPublication information:
Book title: The United States, Cuba, and Castro:An Essay on the Dynamics of Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire.
Contributors: William Appleman Williams - Author.
Publisher: Monthly Review Press.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1962.
Page number: 1.

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